


Sleight

by llassah



Category: Coriolanus - Shakespeare
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 11:18:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/llassah/pseuds/llassah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a hate story.</p><p> <i>He is not a clever man, but he is a good one. A good soldier. Coriolanus is a better one.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pamphlet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pamphlet/gifts).



He is not a clever man. Not as other men are. He had an uncle, growing up, who could produce a dove from the sleeve of his robe. That is clever. He stuttered a little as a boy, grew sullen, cold. Wielded weapons rather than words. Now, he uses both, but it was a battle to make his speech smooth, to give flight to his thoughts. He is not a clever man, but he is a good one, he thinks. A good soldier.

His uncle was killed when he was but fifteen. The dove from his sleeve was no help.

It is seamless, the transition from playing soldiers in the streets to being a real soldier. He kills his first man when he is fifteen. He is sick afterwards, tastes bile for the rest of the skirmish. The smell of blood feels like it has made a home in his nostrils, will never leave. They are fighting Rome, as they ever have and ever will. He does not know it at the time, but Caius Martius fights this day too. They miss each other on the field. Martius kills three men. One of them is his cousin.

He lights the beacon. If everything else about that night fills him with a hot sense of shame, he knows this: he lights the beacon, as arrows fly past his head and spark off the rocks. His fellow guard’s taking a piss when they come. He dies without the chance to even scream, dick in his hand, piss dribbling down his leg. He crumples, silently, to the floor. Blood spurts from his throat for longer than he thought possible. Tullus grabs a branch from their fire, burns his hand on it, sobs at the smell of his own flesh blistering and cracking and he may be crying like a child but he does his duty, his one duty, crawls to the beacon, heart fast as a rabbit’s, throws the branch onto the tinder. The oilsoaked logs send the flames up to the sky, throw their heat onto his face as around him the enemy swear in their unfamiliar tongue and he watches the fires as they spread along the marshes, points of light, and tries to work out if he laughs or cries.

He remains sprawled on the floor as they speak, their voices harsh and low, cradling his hand to his chest. He can smell the blood of his fellow guard, and knows that while they have no reason to kill him now, they probably will. He fears death. He probably always will. He knows that the best soldiers, the heroes do not, but he does. If he didn’t fear death, he would fight these men, injured and outmatched as he is, but even if he is not a recklessly brave man, he is a sensible one. Not clever, but sensible.

A soldier, not much older than a boy, walks over. His face is covered with mud, but Tullus can see the glint of Roman armour on him. He crouches, puts the tip of his short sword at Tullus’s throat. Just watches him, almost dispassionate, as a thin line of blood trickles down his neck. He could die here. It is as if the soldier merely wishes to see what he will do. He looks into the soldier’s eyes, smiles slowly. He will not beg. He is scared, but he will not beg. The rest of the soldiers leave, but the boy stays. They are a scouting party, so he knows he will not have long before the full force of the army comes, and they will trample him to death if not kill him outright. Still the boy keeps him there and stares.

They will humiliate him. He knows they will. A group of soldiers are not kind. Hot shame burns through him at the thought. He shifts his hips a little, feels nameless desire steal over him. The boy draws his sword down, slowly, over his makeshift armour, down to where his prick stirs, then he laughs, a soft harsh sound. Flames crackle overhead. He can hear the wind howl over the ridges of the mountain. The boy brings him off with his hand as he whines and bites into his lip, hips jerking as he closes his eyes and imagines this was a whore, or better yet a sweet faced girl, not an enemy on a mudchurned hill, next to the body of a man who died with his hand on his dick and piss down his leg. He comes with a sharp cry, keeps his eyes closed as the boy lopes off, as quietly as he had arrived. Tullus scrambles into a cave on the lee side of the slope, waits for the soldiers to pass him by.

They burn his home on the way through. His family escape, but his belongings do not. He buries his fellow guard on the hill, the spade painful in his blistered hands. They drive the Romans out, push them back in time for winter.

He learns strategy. He learns how to command, and begins to rise. Every battle, he goes over with his superiors, and always it is the same question: how did we lose? How did they win?

The old general tells him where he was outflanked, where the first ranks fell and were cut down, pointing with his gnarled finger to the scant line of trees on the map. That’s where the dove was, and he knows he will never quite be quick enough to catch him out in the trick, just as he knows he will never stop trying.

He sees the boy again, fleetingly, in another battle. He is becoming known to his commanders. His name is Caius Martius. Tullus listens for his name in every report of every battle. His shame and his anger become intertwined. His hate becomes something more than the hatred of an enemy force, a deeper enmity.

City fighting is a messy business. They run through shops and taverns, fight at the twists of the stairs, kick over milking pails and worse besides. He commands a small force of men as they defend the granaries and food stores, sends them to where they are needed most. He waits by one of the city wells. The Romans drop dead animals in the water and worse besides, given the chance. He is on his own. His men are green yet, but he has put each of them with a more experienced soldier. This is not where the glory lies in fighting, but the people must eat.

It is dark when Martius comes. He carries a sword, walks with a swagger. He would never poison a well. He would command others to do it. Tullus stares at him, crouched with his sword low. He feels like an animal, as if he would growl if he could, lunges forward with a broken sounding snarl and throws himself at Martius as if against a rock, bloodies himself and draws blood in turn. He loses a tooth, spits it out on the ground and slams Martius’s head against the cobbles at their feet, leaves bruises around his neck and gets a long shallow gash along his collarbone in return. He would do anything to stop feeling like the frightened boy who spilled his seed on a mountainside in terror and lust. It doesn’t work. He _wants_. Martius is hard, too, and it is impossible to tell if they grapple or rut. Their fight ends when two groups of soldiers burst out of the streets to the side of the main square. They are pulled apart by the rush of men, swept to their opposing sides, and while he is alive, Tullus is acutely aware who was winning. He is not a clever man, but he does know victory and defeat. 

He spills his seed in his sleep, dreams of calloused hands and steady eyes, a sword at his throat and the smell of blood. He ruts against his bed to thoughts of their battles, fucks a whore against the wall of a tavern, sinks into her with his eyes closed, thinking of a leaner body, of words of hate rather than gasped out imprecations.

His star ascends, and with it Martius’s. He leads his men, has their respect if not their love, and would die for any one of them. It is his duty after all. He lacks the gift of rhetoric, but he is lucky and strong, well advised and supplied. He knows he should be content but he gains no rest. He fucks one of the city whores and knows that Martius has a wife. He wins back precious ground and knows that Martius took it in the first place, and more besides, with less loss of life. And every battle, they fight, and grapple and gasp and shout as if they were lovers, as if he were driven to seek Martius with a desperate, filthy lust. He wears the scars like a lover’s tokens, and thinks back on each battle like a quarrel, fingers pressing on his wounds.

He applies himself to his study of the enemy's tongue. His mouth shapes the words clumsily at first, but he is diligent. He hones his fighting by day, whispers words and phrases of that hated language to himself by night. It is all for the same purpose, he tells himself. It is not—

He wants to shout hate at Martius in his own tongue.

He gets the chance. He commands a bigger group of men. They are out on open ground, facing the phalanx. His archers do their bloody work, and then the slingshots loose, the ranks thin out as men behind the richer, with their better shields fall prey to arrows. They do not break formation until the last moment, then they throw themselves on the shields, harry them, make gaps wherever they can. His voice is hoarse with shouting when he sees him, impossibly calm, commanding his men in a voice that carries without effort. They clash, and he sees recognition there, a hate that warms him through as blood sings in his veins, and he kills men to get to him, surges forward recklessly because he may be outmatched in battle but he has the means to throw words of hate at this man in his own tongue, and to understand the hate he throws back. Martius asks if he remembers the mountain. Calls him little rabbit. Winks at him, grins with bloodied teeth and the lust that surges through him puts him off balance, almost loses him the battle. He wishes to unlearn this foul tongue.

His mother used to tell him an old story about two wolves, so equally matched they would never stop fighting. The Gods tired of their battle, their snarling and snapping, yelps and howls, so they put them in the sky, never able to meet in battle again. As he battles against this consuming hate, he wishes there was a force that would keep them apart forever. He strives to become this force. He marries, rises up to the highest position in the army. He has a house, and servants. He has all he could need, and in many ways he feels utterly complete. There are days hunting in the glades and groves, nights with his wife, when he feels as if Martius doesn’t exist. He has feasts and banquets, is a great man, a good one. Not a clever one. He knows that.

Coriolanus.

_His city._

He took the name of his city.

His heart is ash. He thought he knew hate before. He knew little of hate.

Then, his adversary wolf comes back, beaten down and grim and his heart grows, his veins fill with sweet wine and it is perfect, it is all he ever wanted, for his enemy is brought down low, he is lying on the ground with his hand blistered. He offers him everything; he will forever be beneath him after all. He has been banished. He has nothing.

Their first kiss feels like a battle. It is graceless, harsh. They both taste of wine, their lips sticky-sweet with peach juice. There is nothing here to come between them; there is no armour, no battle to be fought, and yet the weight of so many years and so many scars weighs heavy on them. He presses Coriolanus up against the wall, pins him there with grasping hands as he ruts like a boy, as he draws out gasps and moans with his tongue, his lips. They do not make it to the bed the first time, part ways as their come dries on their thighs.

The second time, they do. And the time after that. They bite marks into each other’s skin, twist and press with oiled fingers, seek pleasure in the press of skin against skin, fuck and frot and rut until they are sweaty and sated and it feels like a victory, a little like love. He learns the spot behind his enemy’s knee that melts him. He learns the precise place on the back of his neck to apply his teeth to make his enemy limp. His enemy pins him down and fucks him, takes him apart with brutal thrusts then puts him together with gentle touches until he cries out into the night and spills his seed on his sheets. He is no longer the rabbit hearted boy on the hill who won at the same time as he lost. His adversary has been brought down, and will rise only as far as he permits. They are in his house, his land. They will go far together.

Then he sees his men. Then he watches as Coriolanus wins them over, as his dignity and bearing shine through undiminished, as the dazzling skill of his tongue and his charisma makes them as eager as dogs, and he knows, even if he is not a clever man, with a certainty as deep as his bones, that Coriolanus will win their years-fought battle.  He is not a clever man, but he is a good one. A good soldier. Coriolanus is a better one.

He watches, and waits, and tries to fathom the art of concealing a dove up his sleeve.

 


End file.
